House Democrats introduce three retirement bills widening fiduciary advice and plan standing to sue

The bill introduced in the House on Thursday would write rollovers and commissions directly into ERISA’s fiduciary definition: investment advice or a recommendation, a rollover included, would carry the fiduciary label when a fee is paid, and that compensation would count no matter its source — a commission among them. The Workers Retirement Savings Protection Act of 2026 is one of three measures Reps. Bobby Scott, D-Virginia, and Mark DeSaulnier, D-California, introduced during a pro forma session, as PLANADVISER first reported. Scott is the ranking member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and DeSaulnier a ranking member of its Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee; the package targets participants’ standing to sue, the fiduciary definition, and mandatory arbitration clauses, which both men framed as the starting point for whatever Congress does next under the SECURE banner.

ERISA as it stands attaches the fiduciary label to advisers who render investment advice for a fee or other compensation, direct or indirect. The Scott bill would specify that such compensation includes a broad range of payments from any source, commissions among them, connected with or resulting from the adviser’s recommendation. That lands squarely on a 401(k)-to-IRA rollover, where the money can arrive from the plan, the recordkeeper, the fund company, or the receiving custodian. Naming rollovers in the definition and counting compensation regardless of who writes the check would make the fee question prior to the advice rather than a disclosure that trails it. Treasury has been working on a voluntary electronic rollover process under SECURE 2.0, and the $4.9 trillion IRA-over-401(k) spread is what gives the fiduciary language its reach.

The second Scott bill, the Protecting Workers Benefits Act of 2026, would codify a rejoinder to the Supreme Court’s decision in Thole v. U.S. Bank, which held that participants in a defined benefit plan lacked standing to sue plan fiduciaries for breaching their duties because they had suffered no individual financial loss. The bill would let individuals bring an action as assignees on behalf of their plan, similar to whistleblower actions under the False Claims Act, a route that suggests plan fiduciaries and the advisers who serve them could face a wider range of plaintiffs.

The third bill addresses mandatory arbitration clauses. The coverage does not name it or describe its terms, so what it would do to the arbitration provisions sitting inside advisory client agreements is unconfirmed — of the three, it is the text a practice would want in hand before a compliance calendar is set. Scott’s office said the legislation is endorsed by the AFL-CIO, the Alliance for Retired Americans and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “If Congress considers a ‘SECURE 3.0’ retirement bill in the future, these pro-worker bills must be included,” Scott said in a statement. DeSaulnier said the three-bill package would hold employers to higher standards, “protecting workers’ access to recourse under the law.” Whether a SECURE 3.0 vehicle will materialize to carry them remains an open question.